The present inventive concepts relate to semiconductor devices that generate a security key, a method of generating the security key, and a method of enrolling the security key.
Technologies related to security and encryption have become increasingly important with regard to communication and mobile devices. Since keys generated by software schemes may be leaked or stolen through hacking, hardware-based security schemes are currently being developed. In particular, semiconductor devices having a physically unclonable function (PUF) are being developed.
Semiconductor devices having a PUF may generate a unique key randomly based on a process variation. The key as generated by such semiconductor devices may be prevented from being cloned because the process variation is used. However, the data output by such semiconductor devices may include error due to the process variation. An error correction operation may be used to reduce a bit error rate (BER) of the output data. As security and encryption have become increasingly important, the size or amount of data output by semiconductor devices has currently been increasing, and thus the time necessary to perform error correction operations has increased. Accordingly there is a need to reduce the area and operating time of the semiconductor device.